Tagged: Juan Pierre

Yet another spectacular outing from Mr. Philip Gregory Humber. I talked about consistency in yesterday’s post and I’ll bring it up again. Humber has been the most consistent starter on the staff this season and I had no idea we acquired him until he was on the mound out of the bullpen. Now he’s showing off a sparkling ERA of 2.85. How awesome has this guy been, huh? I’d give him some honorary bullpen points but that would be too cheesy. This blog draws the line at cheese.

The offense wasn’t much tonight but what we got was enough. Juan Pierre drove in A.J. Pierzynski in the fifth inning on a single that went through the gap between first and second. Pierre again reached base in the top of the tenth on a grounder to first baseman Juan Rivera. Pierre was chugging hard down the line and beat out Jays pitcher Mark Rzcpsuiueofhshfkhski… I think that’s how you spell that… anyway, two runs scored on that play. Adam Dunn struck out four times. *sigh*

Jesse Crain came through with another huge outing. He came on to pitch to Jose Bautista in the eighth inning, ending up walking him, then got Arencibia to ground out to Alexei Ramirez. The Mohawked Monstrosity gets three points for Situational Clutchness. Sergio Santos earns his eighth save of the year and collects two points in doing so. Crain takes over the top spot in the standings.

What a fantastic game. I jumped off my chair in the ninth inning when we scored the two runs. My dad looked at me and said, “Did they win?” and I said, “No, we’re in Toronto.” and he said, “…but did they win?” and I said, “No, but we scored two runs.” to which he said, “And you reacted like that?”

Gavin Floyd came out ready to pitch tonight. He gave up one run in the top of the first inning and then Cruised like Tom through the next six innings (for seven total). Three strikeouts and one walk is pretty darn impressive from Floyd. Not as impressive as Peavy’s outing last night, but I won’t complain. Gavin has been really back-and-forth over his last few starts and that is why I call him The Pitcher of Mystery. He had that fantastic start in Seattle (one of the Games of the Year that you can find in the sidebar) then he gave up five runs in four innings against the A’s in his next start. Go figure.

The offense was ready to go from the start as Paul Konerko drove in a pair in the bottom of the first. Doubles off the bat of Alexei Ramirez and Adam Dunn plated two runs each and then a Carlos Quentin two-run homer in the fifth inning gave Gavin Floyd and the bullpen all of the runs they needed.

Speaking of the bullpen, Chris Sale and Tony Pena both made appearances. Sale gets two points but Pena only gets one for allowing a run and killing the buzz of the evening. I was pretty pumped for the eight to one final score and then Pena had to give up a run. What a loon. Is it too much to ask for our bullpen to shut people down? I know they had a seven run pillow but still.

Overall, a good W from the guys. Offense, defense, pitching, bullpen, everyone was solid. Even Juan Pierre was fine.

The Sox welcome the Los Angeles Dodgers of a City that is Nowhere Near Los Angeles… oh wait, no, sorry, that’s the Angels. The team we’re gonna play is the Los Angeles Dodgers who are Actually in Los Angeles. Ted Lilly (3-4, 4.83) will go for those guys and my Humberometer is off the charts, which means Phil Humber (3-3, 3.18) is due for another start. Hopefully he can keep the magic workin’.

I will admit that I was as nervous as a nervous person when Thornton came into the game in the ninth inning. He has a few blown saves which lead to him losing the closer job so naturally I’d be on the edge of my seat. We had worked so hard to tie the game and then take it to extras (what a job by Santos but I’ll get to that later). That play that he and Konerko made… oh my goodness. Yunieski Betancourt, Brandon Phillips, and now Paul Konerko – OF ALL PEOPLE – getting in to the Behind-the-Back Flip Club. Turned out to be a fun game and I’m glad I stayed up for it.

Adam Dunn started the scoring (for the Sox) in the top of the third inning with a MAMMOTH blast to right field, his fourth home run of the year. Dunn has gotten extremely hot on this West Coast trip and hopefully that will continue into Oakland and when we come back home. I don’t remember exactly when Omar Vizquel replaced Mark Teabag but I know that Vizquel’s first at bat was in the eighth inning and it was a double that scored Alex Rios. This brought the Sox within two runs with some work to do. A.J. Pierzynski hit a double in the ninth inning that scored Adam Dunn and moved The Bridge to second base. Vizquel hit a sacrifice fly that scored Lillibridge who moved to third base on a wild pitch.

Sergio Santos walked the leadoff hitter then got a popout and a double play in the bottom of the ninth inning. We moved to the top of the tenth tied four to four. Alexei Ramirez singled with one out then moved to third base on an Adam Dunn double. A wild pitch scored Ramirez and then The Bridge sacrificed to bring Dunn home. Matt Thornton worked a one-two-three bottom of the tenth for his first save of 2011.

Whew!

Jake Peavy was better than most of us hoped he would be. Six innings, four runs, four strikeouts, and no walks is fantastic for a guy who hasn’t faced Major League batters in almost a year. His defense could’ve done a much better job behind him (Teabag and Pierre just to point fingers) but he did all he could on the mound. Unfortunately The Project couldn’t get a win but there will be other chances. My only concern now is waking up and reading that he has unusual pains in his shoulder and needs to be shut down. That’s obviously the worst-case scenario but it could happen. Let’s just hope it doesn’t.

Santos will get three points for earing the win and holding the Angels in a close ballgame. Thornton earns two points for a save. I’ll leave Jeff Gray on here to show that he was part of the bullpen at one point this season.

Bullpen Points Leaderboard

1. Sergio Santos – 24 points

1. Jesse Crain – 19 points

3. Will Ohman – 14 points

4. Chris Sale – 13 points

5. Matt Thornton – 10 points

6. Tony Pena– 8 points

Jeff Gray (DFA 5/11/11) –9 points

The Sox will head to Oakland on Friday night to face the Athletics. My Humberometer tells me that we’re due for a start from The Kid Nobody Saw Coming (2-3, 2.97). He’ll go up against Brandon McCarthy (1-3, 3.26). Remember that guy? Who did we trade him for again…? Oh yeah, John Danks. I’ll take it.

Much like that game against the Royals the other night, I have nothing to say about this one. Nothing witty, nothing meaningful, nothing I really noticed. Buehrle put up a good effort, Thornton and Crain were excellent out of the bullpen (two points for each) but Juan D’Vaughn Pierre. Ugh.

Buehrle had such a good game, too! 8 innings of shutout baseball? I doubt we’ll get that from him again this season. It still counts for his final stats, he ended up with a no decision, but it seems like such a waste if you can’t come away with a win.

I got excited when, in the ninth inning, Ed Farmer said that Adam Dunn picked up a bat. “Is he gonna pinch hit!? HE COULD WIN THIS GAME HERE!!” But Darrin Jackson said it was probably just a habit. He wants to be in there but he can’t, so the least he can do for himself is hold on to a bat. I get that. But how epic would that have been if he had hit a walk-off something?

He should be in the lineup tomorrow against Trevor Cahill (1-0, 1.42). Edwin Jackson will pitch for the Sox (2-0, 1.93) and if we get an outing half as good as his start against the Rays, we should be good to go.

I’d love it if we could get the job done without so many late-inning dramatics (though I do enjoy those… most of the time…) but this was fun!

We got to Joakim Soria, arguably one of the top closers in the game, and we got to him at the exact right moment. Players will tell you that there is one pitch in every at bat that is the right pitch to hit and all of our guys swung on those pitches. First and third with two outs for Konerko and he brings the Sox within one run. Then the Big Guy, Captain Clutch, the guy I said needed to be good for this team to thrive, comes up HUGE with a 2-run double to put us up 7-6. Look at his reaction here

The Royals tied it up again, though, on a little flair off the bat of Kila Ka’aihue to send it into extra innings. Brent Morel – MY BOY – drove in two runs in the top of the twelfth to put us up for good.

Adam Dunn is gonna be out for at least a week after an emergency appendectomy but we proved today that we can win without him. (Not that we don’t need him to win. We’re paying him to help us win.) My thoughts going into this season were that Quentin and Beckham would carry this team and they both entered 2011 with big If’s attached to them. Look at them now: Quentin is batting .500 with 2 homers and 10 RBI, earning him Player of the Week, and Beckham has 6 runs scored and is batting .364.

Another guy that I need to point out is Juan Pierre. That guy has been the igniter of this offense and whenever he’s on base he scores (5 runs in 7 hits so not every time. Who hasn’t exaggerated in their lifetime, though, right? …right?).

Switching over to the pitching side of this game, I’m sick of Will Ohman already. When Ed Farmer said he was comin’ in to pitch I set my head down on the pillow on my bed and said “Aww great…” Apparently I was loud enough that my 11-year-old brother came in to ask what was wrong.

“Ohman’s pitching.”

“Is that bad?”

“Probably.”

“Oh, sorry.”

Unfortunately I have a feeling it’ll be like that all season. We always need to have that one guy we sink our heads on to our pillows because of. Mike MacDougal, Scott Linebrink, David Aardsma, Bobby Jenks for a while.

Ugh… these games give me headaches… 4-0 right off the bat and we can’t hold on to it. We could barely hold on to 14-0. If the whole season is gonna be like this I’m going to need a lot more bags of Sweet Tart Gummy Bunnies.

Nothing special about this post, just wanted to inform everyone that the Sox are going to be starting Andruw Jones in center field tonight, with Alex Rios in left and Juan Pierre at DH. Quentin will most likely be patrolling right field because I haven’t heard anything different.

As far as I know those are the only changes in the lineup for tonight’s game.